


benchmark

by flatwoods



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Baz's POV, Fluff and Angst, M/M, i guess, me? writing something for once? its more likely than you d think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 01:36:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14153847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flatwoods/pseuds/flatwoods
Summary: He’s sleeping in my arms. Or at least I thought he was. But now he’s saying something, something that’s soft and sad based on the cadence of his voice, even if I can’t quite tell what it is.“What?” I push against him, sleepily. He looks up at me, and then away. Like he’s ashamed. “I said, I’m sorry.”My brain’s foggy. I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me. “Sorry for what? Spit it out.”For a few seconds, the room is deadly quiet. I can’t even hear him breathing.“Sorry you fell for the Chosen One and ended up with a Normal.”





	benchmark

When Snow first apologizes, it’s so soft I can’t make out the words. Really, what tips me off is the vibration—his chest against mine. His breathing interrupted.

We’re lying together, on my bed, my imposing and huge bed that’s still way too big, because even my room in our vacation home has to be unnecessarily gigantic. Snow’s here for summer break. (Well, officially, the Bunces are here, because Mitali Bunce has taken over Watford, and that means she and some important members of the Coven are here to talk over the details of how she’s running the show. Simon just tagged along.) He’s only here for the first week, supposedly, but I’m either leaving with him or making him stay longer. Snow isn’t really supposed to be sleeping in my room, but no one knew he was coming until the last minute— _he_ didn’t know he was coming until the last minute, apparently Penelope Bunce just dragged him out of bed and into her car before he knew what was happening—and so there wasn’t a place for him. And I said he could sleep on my sofa, quietly, when no one was paying attention, and because no one was paying attention, no one seems to mind.

He isn’t sleeping on my sofa.

He’s sleeping in my arms. Or at least I thought he was. But now he’s saying something, something that’s soft and sad based on the cadence of his voice, even if I can’t quite tell what it is.

“What?” I push against him, sleepily. He looks up at me, and then away. Like he’s ashamed. “I said, I’m sorry.”

My brain’s foggy. I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me. “Sorry for what? Spit it out.”

For a few seconds, the room is deadly quiet. I can’t even hear him breathing.

“Sorry you fell for the Chosen One and ended up with a Normal.”

There’s a tremor in his voice that I can’t stand hearing. “Snow, what are you talking about? Come off it. You know I… what, do you think I’m disappointed or something? Because let me assure you, that’s not the case.” I roll to one side and push myself up on my elbows, getting my head a bit above Snow’s. Forcing him to look me in the eye. “Merlin, Simon, you _know_ how long I’ve wanted this.”

He isn’t comforted; instead, his face twists. I can’t even tell if he noticed I called him Simon. He looks like he might cry, and then he curls in a little. Like he doesn’t want me to see if he does. “That’s what I mean, though. I’m not the version of me you wanted.” He half-smiles to himself, but sadly, and it’s too hard to be real. “You got a dud.”

“Fucking hell, Snow, didn’t we do this at the leavers ball already?” He shakes his head slightly and sighs, sounding frustrated. Snow takes a moment to collect his thoughts, to string them together without stuttering his way through a bluster like he tends to. “Look. I know what you said. But I just, I can’t… I know you say you saw more in me than power and all that. But you can’t deny that it was so much of me. Being the—the fucking Chosen One was who I was, all of who I was, and I don’t understand how you can love that and then this, how you can love both of me—”

“Do you even _hear_ yourself?” That gets him to shut up. He looks shocked and maybe a little angry. It doesn’t matter. I’m angrier. “All that you were? You were always so much more than that.”

Snow looks dubious. I sit up and stare down at him, and after a moment, he sits up as well. Face to face. He won’t let me be above him. We’re never going to stop challenging each other.

“Listen, if you’d just been the Chosen One… that’s the part of you I was taught to hate. And when I fell for you, I fell for that too, but that wasn’t the whole of you! That was the part of you that meant—that was the reason that I felt like loving you was going to kill me. Literally. That was the reason that, in all my fantasies, one of us died eventually.”

Snow is looking at me, blue eyes wide. I wonder how much of this I’ve said before—he’s pressed me for information time and time again already, prying his way into my lifetime crush on him. He thinks it’s endlessly sweet and endlessly funny and endlessly embarrassing for him. I think it’s more embarrassing for me, I’m sure I’d blush if I could, but I always tell him about it anyway. I can’t remember, but it clearly hasn’t gotten through his thick skull if he still feels like this, so I keep talking.

“Simon, this is… it’s different, but it’s better. Yeah, okay, there’s more long silences and less mindblowing sex—” (this earns a quiet snort) “—but there’s more... I never thought that we could actually be together. A couple. Boyfriends. Who weren’t inevitably going to kill each other.”

“So…”

Snow draws the word out. I can’t tell if he’s lost the thread or if he just wants more reassurance. Either way, I’ll give it to him. His voice is melancholy, but there’s a touch of hope there, too.

“So in this version, we both get to survive ‘til the end.”

“That’s kind of depressing, isn’t it? That our benchmark is survival?”

Simon sounds like he’s half-joking and half-sad, and something in his voice reminds me of that first night, after he kissed me in a forest on fire. Lying on our backs in front of my fireplace. The next morning. I was so unwilling to believe that any of it was real, that it could keep being real. His voice is a weed between the pavement cracks. A sapling growing up out of a neglected sewer grate. Half-dead and waiting to be crushed.

I lean over to the boy next to me, the boy who’s all tangled curls and beautiful moles and golden skin and, _Merlin,_ leathery wings. And a tail. And blue eyes, hopeful and sad and tired blue eyes, blue eyes that glow out of dull purple circles the color of bruises.

I remember those eyes, half-lidded and not even looking at me, and still capable of breaking all my walls down.

_“You should talk, Snow. You always go for the kill shot.”_  
“When I’m fighting. We’re not fighting.”  
“We’re always fighting.”  
“Or not.” 

This time, it’s my turn to be the optimist.

“Maybe it was.” I kiss Simon, lightly and briefly, and he gives me a soft look that melts me from the inside out. “But I don’t think it has to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> yeet
> 
> this is very short and i havent written anything in forever. also ive never written in first person for a fic but given that's how the book is written it felt weird to do it differently. i might write a few more oneshots for carry on? so lmk if u liked it lol


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